


i am become death

by butterflyweb



Category: Big Bang (Band)
Genre: M/M, zombie apocalypse AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-19
Updated: 2012-10-18
Packaged: 2017-11-16 14:29:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflyweb/pseuds/butterflyweb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>he doesn’t hear anything. no traffic, no sirens, no birds. there’s nothing but silence and the relentless sun, bright and innocent over the scene.</i> inspired by i am legend and 28 days later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

In one moment, there is nothing.  
  
In the next, he’s choking on a breath; in the next, he can feel the rough cotton of sheets under his hand, the gooseflesh on his arms; in the next, there’s light burning through his eyelids, orange and muted and when he forces them open, it’s like pushing up a window with a bent frame.  
  
The world is a messy blur of color and light and he drags in harsh breaths like they might not come otherwise, not daring to close his eyes even as the light sends pain arcing through his skull. It’s too bright, too bright, but he feels like he’s had his eyes closed for months and it was hard enough getting them open the first time.  
  
He tries to make a noise, to form a word, the brilliant white of the room fading into cool, clean shapes and forms, the sharp beep of a machine forcing its way through the silence. The walls are blue, he thinks, swallowing painfully, as if for the first time. The walls are blue and there’s a television on one of them, there’s....  
  
The light is coming from a broad window, the sun dipping towards the horizon, casting light and shadow into the room, leaving distorted, elongated shapes on the curtain that surrounds the bed. Bed. He’s in a bed, he’s...  
  
He lifts a hand, eyes tracing the tube that disappears under gauze and tape into the back of his hand. He’s in the hospital. Why...He lifts a hand to his nose, the itch of it sudden and persistent, only to freeze as he feels another tube, more tape, his hand unsteady and his fingers cold. What happened to him?  
  
“Hello?” he tries to call out, fingers pushing over the sheets, searching for a call button, for something. His voice is thin and rough from disuse, catching painfully in his throat as he tries again. Dimly, he notices that the flowers on the window sill are all dead.  
  
His fingers find the remote, pushing at the button in a spasmodic motion, again and again, reaching for the tape on his face, trying to pull the tube out of his nose and gagging as he manages it, curling in on himself.  
  
No one comes.  
  
He raises the remote with shaking hands, pushing at it until the bed creaks up inch by inch, fingers curling around the metal safety rails to pull himself up further. The dying sun casts his shadow across the floor.  
  
“Hello?” Seunghyun whispers to the empty room, into the stale silence broken only by the quick, dulcet beeps of the heart monitor. The same silence that carries past the door, where there are no footsteps, no pages over the intercom, no ringing phones. Nothing.  
  
“Is anyone there?”  
  
*  
  
He’s locked inside.  
  
It had taken twenty minutes to get himself out of the bed, to force muscles that didn’t want to obey him to cross the eight feet to the closed door. Twenty minutes to drag up the strength, the courage to pull open the door and see what was waiting on the other side. Twenty minutes to convince himself that this wasn’t some kind of dream, that he was really in a hospital with no idea why, and no one was coming to tell him.  
  
The handle wouldn’t move. Confused, a thin sliver of panic sliding under his skin, Seunghyun had run his fingers over the smooth surface, searching for some kind of lock, but that was stupid. Hospital rooms didn’t have locks, why would they. He’d pushed at it weakly, wrenched at the handle until he was out of breath and hoarse from shouting for someone. This was a hospital for fuck’s sake. Where was everyone?  
  
Seunghyun sits with his back against the wall, knees to his chest, the cold floor seeping through the thin cotton of the hospital gown. Fingers tight in his hair. Maybe...maybe it was quarantine. Maybe that was it. He was sick or something and they couldn’t let him out into the rest of the hospital. The nurses and doctors just needed to take protective measures first, that’s why it was taking so long for them to come. That’s why his family wasn’t here, waiting for him to wake up. That’s why Daesung wasn’t. Seunghyun swallows hard, staring at the pattern on the slick, tiled floor. That had to be it.  
  
But...but how had he gotten sick? He’d been with Daesung, driving back home for the spring break holiday. Had he gotten...what was it, meningitis? He’d seen the posters up around campus. Avian flu? Fuck, the plague?  
  
Seunghyun wipes at his nose reflexively. He doesn’t feel sick. Just weak, and tired, and so fucking hungry.  
  
The sun creeps down the remaining few inches over the horizon, leaving the outside dim and gray, the flickering fluorescent lights above him all that keeps the room from plunging into darkness. Bracing himself against the wall, he forces himself to stand again, legs already shaking just from the attempt, worse when he walks over to the window, to the dead plants and the smattering of cards and balloons that sit there. He snags the blanket off the bed, wrapping it around himself and curling up in the chair that’s pressed up against the sill.  
  
Seunghyun picks up a card, throat tight as he sees a picture of him and Dae knocked over in it’s frame. He sets it upright, thumb smoothing over the glass. God, Dae. He had to be freaking out, thinking Seunghyun was going to up and die of the Black Death, and they wouldn’t even let him in here to see him. Seunghyun is glad, because doesn’t want him sick too, but he still can’t shake the feeling faint feeling of dread. As if something is breathing down cold on his neck, something behind him, just waiting to be discovered. He takes a sharp breath. He’s just contagious. That’s all. Someone will be in soon. It’s good he’s in here, he doesn’t want to infect anyone.  
  
He browses through the few cards that lay there, generic ‘get-well-soon’s from classmates and one of his professors. There’s even a tiny Bear Brick. Daesung, Seunghyun thinks with the first thing that comes close to a smile, reaching for the toy and pausing when he sees something else there that he hadn’t before.  
  
Cigarettes.  
  
He frowns, picking up the pack and opening them. They weren’t his brand, not to mention the pack was half-empty, so they weren’t left for him. Besides, there was some kind of law against smoking in hospitals anyway, wasn’t there? Seunghyun wonders if--  
  
There’s a scratching sound at the door.  
  
He sits up straighter, staring at the unmoving knob. Grip tightening on the cigarette pack, he tries to shake off the sudden drop in his stomach at the first sound he’s heard from outside this room. Good. This is good, they’re going to come in and explain everything, give him a shot or something and tell him everyone’s waiting outside, ready to take him home. Seunghyun clears his throat.  
  
“Doctor?” The word is barely a sound.  
  
 _Crack!_  
  
The door shudders in it’s hinges at the force of the blow against it, the sound of it exploding into the room, all but stopping his fucking heart. Seunghyun scrambles backwards instinctively, back against the cold glass, eyes wide with the fear that’s been lying under the surface from the moment he woke up. It tears at him now, icy fingers cold around his insides.  
  
 _CRACK!_  
  
It comes again, then again and again, like someone’s attacking the door with a battering ram, and underneath, he can see the shuffle of shadows, can hear the harsh panting breaths from across the room. Another blow, another distinct crack, like the wood just might be giving, and then the shatter of glass, loud like a fucking gunshot--  
  
What the fuck what the fuck--Seunghyun nearly bites through his tongue in an effort to be quiet, fingers clutching at the sill of the window so tightly, his knuckles are white. What the fucking hell is out there?  
  
The pounding against the door ceases, until all he hears is his heartbeat jack hammering in his ears, breaths short and quick and panicked. And then--a quiet, almost snuffling sound, like an animal on a scent. The scuff of feet against the floor. Silence. Seunghyun takes a breath.  
  
Fingers push underneath the door  
  
He claps a hand over his mouth to keep from screaming, terror sharp and acrid and so fucking real that he feels the edges of his vision blacken.  
  
The fingers curl up around the edge of the door, flexing and releasing. They’re black with dirt, nails jagged, like something out of a fucking horror movie, and Seunghyun is shaking with hysteria and fear, pressed back into the corner between the window and the wall. He sinks down between the wall and the chair, eyes never leaving the door, arms folded tight around himself.  
  
The fingers clutch and release. Then disappear.  
  
Another scuffles of feet, like rats under the floorboards, and Seunghyun closes his eyes tightly. Prays to a God he always scoffed at because he needs him right now, needs someone, anyone, to keep this from being real. It can’t be real. This is a horrible fucking nightmare and he just.needs.to.wake.up.  
  
Out in the corridor, something starts to howl.  
  
*  
  
When Seunghyun opens his eyes again, he almost forgets to breathe.  
  
It comes in a harsh rush, sucking in oxygen like it’s been hours, rather than seconds. Things come back with an awful, sudden clarity and his eyes go immediately to the closed door, that terrifying, oppressive silence from yesterday back with a vengeance.  
  
It’s morning.  
  
The sun is spilled over the floor, bright and warm as if nothing has happened, and for a desperate moment, he almost convinces himself nothing did. It was a nightmare. Just a bad dream.  
  
It doesn’t explain why he’s cowering on the floor between the wall and an arm chair, why his hands won’t stop shaking. He feels dizzy, like he’s been standing on the edge of a precipice and nearly slipped and in a single sick moment, he knows all too well that last night was real.  
  
He needs to get the fuck out of this place.  
  
Seunghyun pushes himself up unsteadily, holding tightly to the sill and the chair like his legs will give out any second. He’s not sure that isn’t the case. Pushing himself to stand, eyes on the door, he rests his back against the wall and for the first time since he’d woken up yesterday, looks out the window.  
  
He’s high up, has to be near the top floors, the ground a long, agonizing stretch away. Seunghyun presses his forehead to the cool glass, looking down into the empty parking lot. The buildings around him, the over pass that he can see from here...they tell him he’s in Seoul. In the heart of the city. But....Seunghyun swallows hard.  
  
He doesn’t hear anything.  
  
No traffic, no sirens, no birds. There’s nothing but silence and the relentless sun, bright and innocent over the scene.  
  
His heart gives a painful throb in his chest--a delayed reaction to the horror that’s run undercurrent to every breath, every slow realization that he makes since he found himself conscious again. His hands are shaking, and he tells himself that he should lay down, take deep breaths, something. He knows, in an almost clinical, detached way, that he can’t take this right now. His body can’t, his mind can’t, everything is just waiting to fall apart. He’d passed out from terror once, he can’t do it again. Not when the very real possibility looms that he might not wake up from it a second time.  
  
Seunghyun presses cold hands over his face, blocking out the sunlight and trying to take in slow, deep breathes, trying desperately to chain his emotions up and out of the way. There’s something wrong, something so very fucking wrong with the world outside that door, and he needs a clear head. You can’t go into the game afraid of losing, his father used to say, back when he still played football and tried to be the dutiful son. You go in afraid and you end up losing before you even start.  
  
The thought helps, even as he knows deep down there’s far more at stake here than a football match and his father’s approval.  
  
“You’ll figure this out,” Seunghyun tells the window, hands dropping from his face. “You’re going to get out of here, and find Daesung and everyone else and...and whatever’s going on, people are taking care of it. You just have to get out.”  
  
The self-directed pep talk buoys him ever so slightly, fingers curled into fists so tightly, it’s almost like they’re still.  
  
Seunghyun’s eyes slide to the pack of cigarettes, the sudden craving for them worse than the hunger pains. He picks them up, turning the box in his hands, thumb sliding open the cardboard top. He prefers Esse’s, but he’s smoked Marlboro’s before. Seunghyun half-smiles--painfully, and maybe a little hysterically, but no one’s here to judge--and wonders if whoever left these was unfortunate enough to leave their lighter here as well.  
  
It feels like normality, like taking the first step, and so he pulls a cigarette out from the packet and steps back from the window, eyes searching for the lighter amongst the modest amount of items scattered there.  
  
He almost doesn’t hear the footsteps in the hallway.  
  
Almost. But he’s too keyed up, senses still too much in overdrive to miss it, and for a single, terrible moment, the sound paralyzes him.  
  
In the next he’s grabbing the glass vase and dumping the dead flowers out of it, fingers curled tightly around the neck as he hides himself between the chair and the wall. His heart races, all too aware of the way the door had cracked and groaned under the strain of the attack, knowing with cold clarity how little it would take to make it give the rest of the way.  
  
The footsteps stop outside of his door.  
  
Seunghyun’s breathing rushes in and out, so loud he’s sure it could be heard a block away, let alone just on the other side of the door. He sucks it in, holds it until his lungs feel ready to burst, clutching the vase tightly.  
  
Something clicks and shifts, and then the door handle turns and his stomach with it.  
  
Maybe he won’t be seen, maybe--  
  
“Hey, sorry I’m late. It was cloudy this morning so--” The young, male voice stops abruptly, the sound of his footsteps with it and Seunghyun listens to his heart race in the interim. Who is that? How did he get in so easily? How--  
  
“Oh shit,” the voice breathes, then chokes on the words a second time, and then the voice is solid and real and he’s in Seunghyun’s field of vision, clutching at the sheets on the bed.  
  
He’s skinny, almost impossibly so, wrapped up in dark clothes and a beanie pulled low on his head. He’s young, is Seunghyun’s second thought, fingers still white-knuckled around ceramic. Younger than Daesung, from the look of him, and he’s shaking. Not an enemy, he thinks, almost desperately. Not one of...of whatever the hell those things outside his door were, but he still can’t make himself move from the floor. Can’t open his mouth to say a thing.  
  
“No, fuck, Seunghyun--”  
  
The backpack slung over his shoulder slips off, falling to the floor with a dull thud, the man hardly seeming to notice. He presses his hands to his face, the heels of his fists over his eyes. Seunghyun doesn’t know him from Adam, so how the hell does this man know him?  
  
It only takes a second--the vase slipping from his sweaty palms to clatter on the floor--and he finds himself staring down a gun barrel in the next.  
  
Seunghyun flings his hands up on instinct, covering his face and choking out a denial, and so he doesn’t see eyes widen. Doesn’t see the man tuck the gun back into his jeans, doesn’t open his eyes at all until hands are tight on his arms like vises, pulling them away from his face.  
  
“Holy fuck, you’re awake. You woke up--”  
  
Seunghyun stares back into the other man’s pale face, his disbelieving eyes, too numb to even attempt to pull away from him.  
  
“Who...who are you?” he gets out in a rough voice, fingernails digging into the skin of his arms, the other man’s grip not letting up.  
  
“Where’s Daesung, my family, where the fuck is everyone--”  
  
The hands on him suddenly let go, the other man falling backward to sit sprawled on the floor, gaze still wide and disbelieving, and under that...relieved.  
  
“I didn’t think....” He seems to shake himself, almost visibly, the words changing abruptly.  
  
“You were in a coma. You’ve been in a coma for four months.”  
  
Seunghyun blinks at him slowly, because it isn’t the answers he asked for and he feels instantly that it isn’t one he wanted.  
  
“No, I’m...I’m sick. I’m sick in hospital.”  
  
“You were in a car accident, four months ago,” the man tells him, something on his face that Seunghyun can’t read. “You’ve been in a coma since then, a head injury. It...it was in your chart.”  
  
He tries to take in the words, to make sense of them, fit them with what he knows. A car accident. Driving home from Incheon. Seunghyun swallows hard.  
  
“I don’t know you,” he gets out, taking in the man’s street clothes, the rings on his left hand, the earrings that curve in soft lobes. “Do you...do you work here?”  
  
The man hesitates. Touches his chest. “I’m Jiyong. And I don’t work here, I just...”  
  
A shadow passes over the room from the window outside, the ever so slight darkening of the room cutting off whatever the other man was going to say, Jiyong pushing himself immediately to his feet to look out the window.  
  
“Shit,” he mutters, moving quickly to the door of the hospital room and pushing it shut.  
  
Seunghyun pulls himself to his feet, following where his gaze had gone, the sky gray and overcast. “What’s...what’s wrong?”  
  
Jiyong looks at him, one hand still tight on the door handle. “You’re walking, that’s...that’s good, I wasn’t...” He shakes his head again. “Look, I’m sorry, but we don’t really have time to get into the whole explanation and everything right now.”  
  
The slender man takes a deep breath, moving across the room to grab his bag.  
  
“If you’re moving, than that’s what we need to be doing. The sun’s spotty today--it could rain and we can’t risk it.” He looks up at Seunghyun, eyes sharp. “They were here last night, the door was...”  
  
Another shake of his head, and Jiyong’s habit of stopping in the middle of sentences, only to never pick them up again grates on him.  
  
“Who’s ‘they’? What the hell is going on?”  
  
Jiyong shakes his head. “Not right now. Get what you need, I’ll go...I’ll go dig up a pair of scrubs for you, and then we need to go. This place isn’t safe anymore, hasn’t been, but I couldn’t risk trying to move you, not how you were. Now that you’re awake....we can’t waste any more time.”  
  
*  
  
Jiyong walks almost faster than Seunghyun can follow, the spring air cold and insistent, cutting through the thin fabric of borrowed blue scrubs.  
  
The sun seems too far away above them, a dim muted yellow behind streaky clouds, watching but not warming. It makes him pull the blanket from his bed a little tighter around his shoulders, makes him look down and not ahead, focusing on the way pebbles press into the soles of his feet through the hospital slippers, instead of how they’re walking down the middle of one of the busiest streets in Seoul.  
  
And there isn’t a car in sight.  
  
“Where are we going?” he asks, his voice quiet, no blaring horns or shouting street vendors to force it louder. It’s the third time he’s asked and he’s getting sick of being ignored  
  
The other man hasn’t told him a goddamn thing since he’d come back in his room with a curt “put these on”, shoving a bunch of thin synthetic fabric into Seunghyun’s arms and going to look out the window. There’s a thin edge of panic underlying every movement, every step that’s almost a jog, but Seunghyun forces himself to believe that Jiyong has a plan. Because right now, total stranger or not, he’s all Seunghyun has.  
  
He’s surprised with an answer, Jiyong not slowing, not looking back at him for a moment.  
  
“I have a flat three blocks from here.” The words are clipped, a thin shoulder shrugging to heft his bag higher.  
  
Encouraged, Seunghyun tries to will his legs to walk faster, the pace they’re keeping up exhausting his already weak body. “Are there other people living with you? I mean, is it like a safe house or--”  
  
“Look,” Jiyong cuts him off sharply, his piercing gaze darting over his shoulder to find Seunghyun’s, nearly stopping him in his tracks.  
  
“If you’re feeling chatty, why don’t we start off with the shit you _need_ to know before we start on the things you _want_ to know. Sound fair?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Number one. Those things that were outside your door last night?”  
  
Seunghyun swallows in a dry throat, half-nodding.  
  
“Let’s start with the fact that they were real. Very real, very deadly, very much the stuff of your fucking grade school nightmares, okay? You see one of them, and trust me, you’ll know when you do, you run. Got it? And you run to the light.”  
  
He chokes on a laugh, something a little hysterical in the sound, and he thinks he might still be waiting for someone to pop out and tell him this was all some kind of sick hidden camera show. “What, are they vampires?”  
  
A snort. “Don’t be stupid. They’re...they’re people. Were people. They’re not anymore. They were infected, and if you want to live, you’ll stay the hell away from them. Always in the sunlight, got it? Never in the shade, never in the shadow of a building, never out at night.”  
  
Seunghyun feels his gaze drawn to the yawning buildings around them, the shadows cast over the sidewalk. The way they’re walking in the thin strip of sunlight that splits the road. He inhales sharply. “What...what infected them?” Jiyong takes an audible breath, and blows it out just as noisily. He looks towards the sky and walks faster. “Jiyong-ssi?”  
  
The shorter man stops suddenly, grabbing him by the arm, something almost desperate on his face and Seunghyun is too startled to jerk away.  
  
“Look, Seunghyun-ssi. I _promise_ you that the second we’re inside, I’m going to answer any questions you have that I can, alright? I _swear_. But right now, we only have so much fucking time before they start sniffing around us and it only takes a second for a thick cloud to cover the sun and we’re _fucked_ , okay? So _please_ , let’s _move_.”  
  
Jiyong lets him go, jaw set and determined as he slips his arm through the other strap on his bag, nodding and starting off again.  
  
Seunghyun waits until his back is turned to glance into the shadow of an alleyway, searching for a hint of the menace that Jiyong described. The one that’s sent a chill all the way down into his bones.  
  
He only looks for a moment, but a moment is all it takes for him to feel, with a cold certainty, that they’re being watched.


	2. 2

Jiyong’s ‘flat’ turns out to be a boarded-up, Western-style house in the heart of Seoul. There’s no familiarity in the strange architecture, the way it sticks out from the face of the city like an apple among oranges. The walls are a hard red brick, spray painted with obscenities and crude cartoonish drawings of screaming faces, garbage littering the porch, the sidewalk that leads up to it.  
  
For some reason, it’s more disquieting than the empty streets and the abandoned cars, like he’s truly stepping into a world he doesn’t know.  
  
A hand falls on his arm, Jiyong urging him forward and up the walk, a faint stream of sunlight falling on the backs of their necks.  
  
The door closes heavily behind them, blocking out the sun and the fresh air and the landscape of a city he’s lived all his life in. It’s an entirely new sensation of feeling trapped.  
  
Seunghyun tries to let his eyes adjust to the dimness inside as behind him, Jiyong does up what seems like an endless series of locks on the door, clicking into place one by one. It’s then that he starts flipping the switches, a faint electric humming noise filling the silence as the lamps in the room come to life.  
  
The house itself is all but stripped bare. There’s no furniture, no television, no table. Just dusty hardwood floors and a dozen lamps plugged into each and every available socket, the wallpaper peeled and tearing. If Jiyong hadn’t led him straight here, hadn’t let them in with keys…he would’ve said there was no way someone actually lived here.  
  
“Did you live here….before?” His voice sounds strange and echoing in the silence of the room, Jiyong looking at him like he just now remembered he was here. “I mean, before…”  
  
Before whatever happened to turn the city into a ghost town, happened. Before the last two months, when the world started spinning out of control and he stayed still, stuck in a hospital bed. Forgotten.  
  
But Jiyong is already shaking his head, rendering an explanation moot. “No. I found it a few weeks ago. It’s more solid than most of the places around here, even though it took ages to board up all the damn windows.”  
  
He tugs off his beanie, revealing a shock of white blonde hair with the roots growing in dark.  
  
A dozen hundred-watt light bulbs or not, he’s suddenly the brightest thing in the room.  
  
A hand touches at his shoulder before he’s realized Jiyong has moved, dizziness swimming through him, and his knees are starting to go weak.  
  
“Come on. Let’s get you upstairs so I can check you over—you’ve been off your feet for two months. Adrenaline should be giving out any time.”  
  
Seunghyun swallows thickly, suddenly aware that his body is trembling under Jiyong’s touch. Faintly, he wonders how long that’s been going on. “I thought…I thought you didn’t work at the hospital.”  
  
A pause, and then patiently, “I didn’t. I was in nursing school. Before. Come on, you need to sit down and drink something."  
  
He has no room or authority to argue, and so Seunghyun lets the other man guide him up a flight of stairs in the center of the sprawling main level.  
  
The upstairs is a world apart.  
  
It becomes immediately obvious, as Jiyong steers him into a room and into a chair, that this is where the other man lives. There are CDs scattered on the floor, a dresser pushed back into the corner, a small bookshelf teeming with novels, many of which proclaim their library ownership on the spine. Through the door, he can see a bed in another room, the layout wide and open.  
  
Jiyong catches him looking, kneeling on the floor to dig through the rucksack Seunghyun has yet to see him part with.  
  
“I think the owners were trying to make it into a duplex or something, with an apartment up top,” he explains unasked, coming up with a bottle of water that he twists the cap off of, pressing it into Seunghyun’s hand as he takes his other wrist. Fingers rest at his pulse point as Jiyong’s gaze fixes on his watch. “There’s a kitchenette up here, too.”  
  
Seunghyun swallows the lukewarm water slowly despite the way his mouth feels like cotton. Watches as Jiyong nods to himself, sitting up on his knees to look into Seunghyun’s eyes, his brow furrowed in concentration.  
  
“Here, follow my finger with your eyes, okay?”  
  
He does his best to try, even as it makes him a little dizzy, the plastic water bottle cracking in his grip. “You said you’d explain what was going on,” Seunghyun gets out, closing his eyes once Jiyong seems satisfied enough to sit back on his heels. “Why…why everything is like this. What those things are.”  
  
There’s a stretch of silence. “You should probably eat something first, you need to start getting your strength back—“  
  
“No,” Seunghyun snaps, opening his eyes to stare at the other man, running a hand back through his greasy, unkempt hair. “No, I want to know. What the hell happened? Where _is_ everyone?”  
  
The questions are loud and stark to his own ears, dropping into the space that separates them like a challenge. Jiyong looks at a loss for long moments, his slender throat working as he swallows slowly, then shifts to close up the rucksack, not looking at him.  
  
“It’s a virus.”  
  
The sound of the zipper is soft and sharp as Jiyong tugs it through metal teeth, Seunghyun’s fingers closing into a fist.  
  
“The news said…it was an experiment. A mutated strain of another disease. They were developing it in labs, it was supposed to be a cure for cancer.” Jiyong stands, pulling the edges of his sleeves over his hands. “A targeted attack on cancerous cells…they didn’t go into much detail, the development stages were still early, but…there was…there was contamination. Exposure.”  
  
The sound of his own breathing is a soft rush in Seunghyun’s ears. In. Out.  
  
“The government kept it hushed at first, there was some news about…about a generator leak at the labs, a radiation threat. They closed it down, and started taking in the surrounding communities for testing. No one really…suspected. Not at first.”  
  
Dimly, somewhere in the back of his mind, Seunghyun remembers seeing an article about a radiation leak on Naver. He hadn’t clicked on it, had checked the football scores instead.  
  
The floorboards squeak as Jiyong walks across the room, his voice agitated and soft with disuse.  
  
“Then one of them got out.”  
  
Seunghyun swallows hard, eyes on the outline of the other man’s profile. “Them?”  
  
“The...things. Creatures. They…were people who’d been infected, but it wasn’t like…a normal virus, it…changed them. Made them feral, violent…and worse, they carried the disease in their bloodstream. People started dying, becoming infected, faster than anyone could control it. The only advantage we had was the photosensitivity, but…it wasn’t enough.”  
  
He remembers the scratching at the door, the howls, like dying animals, the fingers curling under the edge…Jiyong’s hurry to get inside as the sky became overcast…a sick wave of fear doubles him over, Seunghyun dropping his head into his hands as disbelief threatens to give way under the weight of dread.  
  
“How come…how didn’t I know about…”  
  
Footsteps, and then Jiyong is in front of him, hands tight on his arms.  
  
“Breathe. Breathe, Seunghyun. You were in the accident before the news of the epidemic broke. It was already too late, you were in a coma before they even began the quarantine.” A cool hand cups the back of his neck, Seunghyun closing his eyes as he tries not to be sick.  
  
“If…if there was a quarantine, why…” Why is there no one here? Why is the city empty? Where is his family? Seunghyun looks up at him desperately.  
  
“There were evacuations first,” Jiyong tells him quietly. “People started leaving the city, the country, airports were swamped with people fleeing. A lot of people, I think, thought it was an attack from the North, that we were headed for war or something. But news had already gotten to China and Japan and the Philippines, and they were refusing people entry. So the government stepped in.”  
  
Seunghyun shakes his head, not understanding, not wanting to. “But no, that doesn’t…even if most people got out, there should still…”  
  
“A lot of people died, Seunghyun. A lot.” Jiyong’s voice is soft, gentle, and Seunghyun spares an almost hysterical thought as to how he can be so calm. “And…and a lot of people who got left behind….they aren’t people anymore.”  
  
Fingers clutch his arms tightly, almost bruising in their strength, and then relax.  
  
“You’re the only living person I’ve seen in five weeks.”  
  
The words steal the breath out of his chest, Seunghyun lurching out of the chair, movements rigid and aborted, like a malfunctioning piece of machinery. This is—this is insane. This can’t be _happening_ , how could it be? The world didn’t just…it didn’t just fall _apart_ like this. This was Seoul, this was a city of ten and a half million people, how could they be the only ones left? How could the city’s entire population be decimated inside a few months?  
  
“I need—“ Seunghyun chokes, pulling away from Jiyong’s reaching hands, concern stamped like a brand on the other man’s face. “I need air, I can’t—“  
  
Jiyong does catch his wrist at that, long fingers tight, able to circle bone far too easily.  
  
“Calm down—Seunghyun, you can’t leave. Stop—you _can’t_ \--“ Jiyong tries to force him to sit down again, and someone his size shouldn’t be able to manhandle him like this, but Seunghyun’s body is wasted, black already crawling around the edge of his vision. His breathing is short in his own ears. Strained.  
  
“You’re wrong,” he bites out as Jiyong sits him firmly down in the chair, one hand on his wrist, one hand on his cheek. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re lying—you’re lying, this is some kind of…of sick joke, or a drill, or—or—this isn’t a _fucking_ sci-fi novel, this doesn’t—“  
  
“Seunghyun-ssi,” Jiyong cuts in, his voice even and forcibly calm, even as his image swims in front of Seunghyun’s eyes. “Listen to me, you have to calm down, your body’s been under too much stress, you’re going to pass out if you keep this up.”  
  
Grabbing at his hand, Seunghyun tries to pull it away from his wrist to no avail, then reaches up to clutch at the one resting against his cheek. Hyperventilating.  
  
“I can’t—“  
  
“Shh, listen to me. Listen to me, breathe, okay? In and out, come on.”  
  
He closes his eyes tight, trying to obey, to drag air back into his protesting lungs, closing his eyes tight.  
  
“Just like that, Seunghyun-ssi. Breathe. It’s going to be alright, just breathe...”  
  
*  
  
The picture is bent from being folded over inside of his pocket, the left side of it unevenly cut with scissors in an attempt to fit it in a too-small frame.  It's a little overexposed, the angle not the best. But none of that keeps it from being one of his favorite pictures of himself and Daesung, taken when the younger man had needled him into spending the day hiking in Namhansanseong. It had been miserably hot, and he's pretty sure he'd complained the whole way, but you wouldn't know any of that from looking at the photo. The two of them smiling bright, Seunghyun's half-hidden against Daesung's cheek, the younger man's eyes all but disappearing as the shot catches him in mid-laugh.  
  
Seunghyun sucks in a too sharp, too shallow breath, folding the picture in half and shoving in back in his pocket. Floorboards creak and he looks away from the door, tugging his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them.  
  
“You should really try and eat something.”  
  
Jiyong’s voice is cautious and quiet behind him. Curling up a little tighter where he sits on a neatly-made bed, Seunghyun doesn’t respond. Instead, he focuses on breathing the way the other man told him to earlier, in and out, staring at the faded plaster on the walls and attempting to stave off the panic attack that keeps threatening to rear its ugly head. In. Out. In.  
  
“Seunghyun-ssi.”  
  
The floor creaks as he steps closer. Out.  
  
“I know…I know it’s a lot, but you have to get your strength back up. You’ve lost a lot of weight and muscle. ” The bed dips beside him as Jiyong’s weight rests on the edge of it. The hesitation in his voice is stark, and for a minute, Seunghyun pictures him sitting by his unconscious body for all that time, talking to him like a friend, the way he had when he’d come in the hospital room.  
  
In and out.  
  
Seunghyun closes his eyes, blocking out the white wall and the image of Jiyong’s anxious features and the whole sick, crazy reality he’s been thrust into.  
  
“How…how long have you been taking care of me? While I was…while I wasn’t awake?  
  
In.  
  
“About a month and a half,” the other man murmurs. “I was…well, looting, for lack of a better term and I saw you in there…you were…I just couldn’t leave you there alone to die like that.”  
  
Seunghyun’s throat works. “….thank you.” Out.  
  
“Don’t mention it.” The forcible levity of the words fades in the ensuing stretch of silence. “It’s almost dusk…maybe you should try to get some sleep.” A beat. “It’s…easier, sometimes, to sleep through it. I’ll keep watch, so don’t worry, just…just rest.”  
  
The bed shifts as the other man moves to stand.  
  
“What are we going to do?” Seunghyun asks, suddenly, tongue tasting like sandpaper. Body aching and tired and weak in a way he’s never felt before.  
  
The quiet stretches for a long moment, too long, and Seunghyun turns his head to look at the blonde. Jiyong doesn’t meet his gaze, isn’t even facing him, rather staring quietly at a boarded up window. Seunghyun’s stomach twists.  
  
“Jiyong-ssi. What do we do? Now?”  
  
That gets the other man looking at him, his eyes troubled and his expression carefully neutral.  
  
“Survive. Just survive.”  
  
Seunghyun swallows again, something wanting to stick in his throat, as if it knows his stomach won’t be able to take it. “Until they come for us, you mean.”  
  
Jiyong’s shoulders tense, even as his gaze falls. “Come for us?”  
  
He latches onto the idea like a life raft, holding himself a little tighter, the grip he has on his wrist sure to bruise the pale flesh. “A rescue party. Other survivors, the ones who got out. I mean, you said people got out, right? And…and we aren’t infected, right? So we just have to wait till the government gets everything under control and safe, until they can come back for us.”  
  
The blonde looks up at him, reaching over to touch Seunghyun’s knee gently, and if his reassuring smile looks forced, doesn’t meet his eyes, Seunghyun doesn’t see it. Won’t.  
  
“Yeah. Until they come back for us.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://bigbang-fanfic.livejournal.com/956926.html#cutid1).


End file.
